Tourism’s global Facebook campaign ‘world class’

28 Jul 2015

Tourism New Zealand is yet again leading the field in destination marketing entering a global partnership with Facebook to attract visitors to New Zealand.

The Kombi Diaries, a series of five short films following a couple’s trip around New Zealand is the result of a direct collaboration between Tourism New Zealand and Facebook’s in house creative team, developing integrated creative to work across their platforms of Instagram and Facebook. The global digital campaign featuring TheKombi Diaries will feature across nine markets.

The creative collaboration brought together people who traditionally would never work together to build story-driven content and Facebook describes the result as ‘world class’.

Tourism New Zealand’s Director of Marketing, Andrew Fraser said it was increasingly important to be able to work effectively across all digital platforms and working directly with Facebook was a great opportunity to ensure the campaign used the most effective best practice techniques.

“Essentially what we did was go to Facebook and ask them to create a content idea that addressed some of the barriers faced by people who are actively considering coming to New Zealand. Our research showed that while this audience understands the epic landscapes, there are gaps in their knowledge regarding their perceptions of our infrastructure, ease of travelling around New Zealand and the variety of things to do and see.

“These are the people Tourism New Zealand wanted to target. They are not the fly and flop type of visitor. They are the type of visitors looking for real experiences and appreciate authenticity and that is what TheKombi Diaries is about,” says Andrew.

Tourism New Zealand established a collaboration between production company, Symphony, and the Facebook creative shop to bring the idea to life. The result is an engaging, natural story of two American tourists missing the train to Wellington from Britomart and embarking on a Kombi road trip where they meet the locals and see the country.

“The Facebook Creative Shop was on the road trip, collaborated with the production crew and shot their own content. The Facebook team provided two strong insights. The first was a technique to start each of the films in reverse to grab attention in the opening seconds and keep people watching to the end. The second was around length, to not be restricted by 30 or 60 seconds, and make the films as long as was necessary to tell the story and remain interesting.”

The Facebook-produced content includes films, stills and cinemagraphs. In addition,www.newzealand.com/kombidiaries has been established to encourage sharing of stories.

Facebook Creative Shop’s Gavin Carver says: "This was a pure creative collaboration among people who, traditionally, would never have worked together. It’s paving the way for how we grow clients' business, build story-driven content and creatively inspire each another. Symphony really understood the opportunity to tell brand stories on our platforms and the result is world-class.

“Tourism New Zealand is redefining marketing for this category. They have married art and science to create content that is relevant and engaging for a global audience on Facebook and Instagram.”

Symphony’s Client Liaison Peter Moore says: " To be able to target stories into the Facebook medium and have them integrated into a global promotion is not the near future, but the now reality of brand storytelling. It’s fantastic to see Tourism New Zealand embracing this."